Craig Charles says his brother's death made him want to quit 'Coronation Street'.

The 51-year-old actor plays Lloyd Mullaney in the ITV soap and will exit the show in a live broadcast aired next month, but he admitted it was the untimely passing of his brother Dylan that inspired him to reassess his career options and pursue the dreams he had been putting on hold.

Craig said: "It's really quite sad, actually, but my brother died last year. He was 52 - I'm 51. When he died I thought, 'There's things that I've got to do. I've got to do some things before it's my time'. There's so many things that, because Coronation Street is such a big part of your life, you don't get to do.

"So I've just signed a deal with Sony Records and we're bringing out an album on September 18 - a compilation of funk and soul. It's some of the best records ever committed to plastic - 3 CDs on that."

Craig - whose brother sadly passed away while he was appearing on 'I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!' last year - also insisted he won't be returning to the ITV reality show later this year.

He told ITV's 'This Morning': "Then of course mid-November we start making Red Dwarf. We do two series of Red Dwarf back-to-back, which will take me all the way up until March. Then in March I'll sit down and go, 'I wish I was back on 'Coronation Street'!"